Japan Airlines 1628 UFO Encounter, 1986

UFO sightings amongst airline pilots are relatively common, but the sightings of Japan Airlines flight 1628 on November 17, 1986 are notable for the wealth of supporting evidence. An official FAA investigation revealed cockpit recordings, radar data, and eyewitness interviews that all attest to a truly remarkable encounter, and an official government cover-up.

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Illustration by V.R. Laurence (https://vrlaurence.com).
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Sources:

Callahan, John J. “The FAA Investigates a UFO Event ‘That Never Happened’” in Kean, Leslie. UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On The Record. New York, USA: Three Rivers Press, 2010, 222 - 229.

Fox, James, dir. I Know What I Saw. USA: A&E Home Video, 2009. https://imdb.com/title/tt1579236. https://youtu.be/tGMGOdKOPKk.

The Black Vault. Collected documents at “Japanese Airlines JAL 1628 UFO Encounter, November 17, 1986.” September 21, 2018; Updated: June 17, 2020.
https://theblackvault.com/documentarchive/ufo-case-japanese-airlines-jal1628-november-17-1986.
[note that, like Greenewald, references to page numbers ignores the initial banner page in the PDFs: e.g. page 5 in our notes will be page 6 in the file.]

Klass, Philip J. “FAA Data Sheds New Light on JAL Pilot’s UFO Report” in The UFO invasion: The Roswell Incident, Alien Abductions, and Government Coverups, edited by Kendrick Frazier, Barry Karr, and Joe Nickell. New York, NY, USA: Prometheus Books, 1997, 171 - 176. https://archive.org/details/ufoinvasionroswe0000unse/mode/2up.
[originally appeared in Skeptical Inquirer, 11, Summer 1987, 322 - 26. https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/1987/07/22165315/p04.pdf.]

Maccabee, Bruce. “The Fantastic Flight Of JAL 1628.”
http://brumac.mysite.com/JAL1628/JL1628.html,
http://ufoevidence.org/documents/doc1316.htm, https://web.archive.org/web/20160604010624/http://brumac.8k.com/JAL1628/JL1628.html.

Shincho, Shukan. "Terauchi's London interview of December 1986. JAL Pilot's UFO Story Surfaces after 20 Years.” JapanToday, December 8, 2006. https://www.ufocasebook.com/jal1628surfaces.html, originally on https://web.archive.org/web/20081123052116/http://www.japantoday.com/jp/kuchikomi/443.

Stout, David. “Donald Engen Dies at 75; Led Space Museum.” The New York Times. July 15, 1999. https://nytimes.com/1999/07/15/us/donald-engen-dies-at-75-led-space-museum.html.
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Speigel, Lee. "UFO Sightings Increase 67 Percent In 3 Years, History Channel Investigates Unexplained Aerial Phenomena." Huffington Post. August 26, 2011, updated December 6, 2017. https://huffpost.com/entry/ufos-pilots-history-channel_n_935847.

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